The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

[This article originally appeared at Asia Times Online. It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link is provided.]

Awkwardness seems to be a
defining characteristic of the Mitt Romney
campaign to be the next United States president
and of his China policy, as well as of the
candidate himself.

Certainly, Romney does
not have an easy row to hoe. A moderate Mormon
plutocrat who seems to reserve his passion for the
sacred cause of keeping his money safe and happy,
in the Cayman Islands if necessary, he can only count on multi-millionaires - with their
uncomplicated yearnings for further tax cuts, less
regulation, and more complete disengagement from
the US government's political dysfunction and
fiscal mismanagement - as his genuine core
constituency.

Constitutionally
ill-equipped to rally the Republican base, Romney is also an inept,
uninspiring, and unempathetic candidate whose
stumblings along the campaign trail have prevented
the GOP from taking deadly aim on the faltering US
economy and President Barack Obama's alleged
mismanagement of it.

It is Romney's one
good fortune that he is running against Obama,
whom an aroused conservative rank and file
perceives as unacceptably liberal (and black), an
advocate of Big Government (and black), hostile to
free enterprise (and black), uncomfortable
acknowledging America's God-given exceptionalism
(and black), and prudent almost to the point of
being apologetic in wielding US power overseas
(black black black black black).

Romney
appears to have adopted the strategy of pandering
to this conservative base while throwing an
apologetic shrug to the prosperous, cosmopolitan
elites who bankroll his campaign and provide it
with its media heat.

However, if Romney's
political dalliance with right-wing populism
threatens to blossom into a genuine liaison,
business and financial elites and their associates
in the popular press are quick to object. One of
the most interesting illustrations of this
phenomenon is China.

China-bashing is
underpinned by a broad American unease with the
rise of China, an autocratic, independent power
that, unlike erstwhile Asian bigshot Japan, is
manifestly unwilling to submit itself to US
military and economic tutelage. This insecurity
gives special intensity to American distaste for
China's human-rights, environmental, economic, and
foreign policy transgressions against
liberal-democratic values.

The Obama
administration's "pivot" to Asia - which in
retrospect may be remembered most as a sterling
opportunity for the United States to hopelessly
entangle itself in Vietnam's counterproductive
anger toward Beijing and the Philippines'
free-form security funk - will provide ample
opportunities for continued friction and will
institutionalize anti-China hostility in US
politics for the coming decades.

Confronting China, like any other
polarizing initiative, is a self-reinforcing
policy, creating its own momentum out of fear,
self-interest, and escalating contingency
planning.

Logically, the strategic and
diplomatic pivot into Asia requires that the
United States field a credible military deterrent
in case things with China don't go well. To this
end, the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment came
up with a gargantuan war plan - AirSea Battle -
based on the worst-case scenario.

And by
worst case, I really mean worst case: the People's
Liberation Army destroys US military assets in the
Pacific by sneak attack and the US is forced to
engage in an enormous counteroffensive against
targets across China to regain the upper hand.

Fortunately, according to the scenario,
the confrontation doesn't go nuclear.

Actually, the confrontation doesn't go
nuclear because the scenario refuses to consider
it. It simply assumes China won't use its nuclear
weapons because a brisk nuclear exchange would
render the whole scenario (and the beefed-up US
Air Force and naval units eager to demonstrate
their mastery of 21st-century tech war against
hardened targets in the Chinese interior
provinces) moot.

This would be a laughable
case of strategic self-gratification by the ONI, a
fear-mongering Pentagon operation sometimes called
the Office of Threat Inflation, except for the
fact that the US Air Force and Navy love the plan
(according to the Washington Post, the Army and
the Marines are unenthusiastic, for understandable
reasons; after all, the plan is called AirSea
Battle, not Air-Sea-Ground-Heroic Marines Jumping
Out of Helicopters Battle).

Politicians
also love it. Per the Washington Post:

The concept… aligns with Obama's
broader effort to shift the US military's focus
toward Asia and provides a framework for
preserving some of the Pentagon's most
sophisticated weapons programs, many of which
have strong backing in Congress. Sens Joseph I
Lieberman (I-Conn) and John Cornyn (R-Tex)
inserted language into the 2012 Defense
Authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to
issue a report this year detailing its plans for
implementing the concept. The legislation orders
the Pentagon to explain what weapons systems it
will need to carry out Air-Sea Battle, its
timeline for implementing the concept and an
estimate of the costs associated with it. [1]

Big-picture military strategist (and
no olive-branch or panda hugger) Thomas Barnett
wrote in his Time column:

AirSea Battle is an exercise in
spending fantastic amounts of US taxpayer
dollars in certain congressional districts. This
is the only reason it flourishes, and the
primary reason why a cynical Obama embraces it:
it proves his "tough on defense" credentials as
he draws down in Afghanistan.

We have no
serious leadership in Washington. Strategic
thinking has been completely eliminated in the
quest for program-preserving rationales. It is a
sad time to be in this
business.

Barnett also makes the point
that US military, political, and policy elites
won't be the only constituency benefiting from
confrontation with China; so will their opposite
numbers in the PRC:

The worst part? This is a
self-licking ice cream cone.

As China's
development matures and the government is forced
to limit defense spending in deference to the
mounting costs associated with environmental
damage, aging of the population, rising demand
for better healthcare, safer food and products,
etc, the People's Liberation Army desperately
needs an external enemy image to justify
protecting its share of the pie (which is
already smaller than the amount spent on
internal security).

Thus, the PLA needs
the Pentagon's big-war crowd ... as much as the
latter needs the PLA.

This is a marriage
made in heaven - and pursued with an indifferent
cynicism that is stunning in its magnitude.[2]

In summary, thanks to internal,
Chinese, and regional dynamics, the US popular,
political, and military constituency for
confrontation with China is growing and the
steady-as-she-goes contingent (perhaps soon to be
identified as the agents of appeasement) is
shrinking into relative insignificance.

Romney and his advisers have read the
political tea leaves.

A centerpiece of
candidate Romney's surprisingly insubstantial
foreign policy portfolio is China bashing, in the
form of the crowd-pleasing assertion that, on Day
One of his presidency, he will designate China a
"currency manipulator" and instruct the Department
of Commerce to impose countervailing duties if
Beijing doesn't behave. [3] This is meant to make
a marked contrast with the Obama Treasury
Department, which declined to make the currency
manipulator designation this year.

As
Scott Lincicome, an experienced international
trade litigator (and, it might be noted, a
libertarian fan of Romney running-mate Paul Ryan's
economic policies) wrote on his blog, the Romney
China plank is pure, election-year BS:

Treasury's assessment must be done
in consultation with the IMF [International
Monetary Fund] and pursuant to pretty strict
guidelines. In short, the president can't just
tell the Treasury to designate a country a
"currency manipulator," and he/she certainly
can't do it publicly via Executive Order (as
Romney's plan promises). To do so would not only
violate the letter of the law, but also destroy
the Treasury report's credibility.

Second, the president can't just
instruct the Commerce Department to begin
imposing countervailing duties on Chinese goods.
Pursuant to US trade law and regulations, the
imposition of countervailing duties on imports
requires (i) a petition from an affected
industry or self-initiation by Commerce ...;
(ii) preliminary and final findings, based on
extensive evidence (including rebuttal from
Chinese producers, US importers and the Chinese
government) ... ; and (iii) preliminary and
final findings by the non-partisan International
Trade Commission that said imports are injuring
the US industry. Each of these steps is required
by US law and WTO [World Trade Organization]
rules. So Romney's plan to, on the very first
day of his presidency, just start imposing CVDs
[countervailing duties] on Chinese imports would
be in direct conflict with both US law and the
United States' WTO obligations. [4]

A further difficulty for
Romney is that the merits of the case against the
PRC as a currency manipulator are becoming rather
thin, and serve as a rather poor justification (on
grounds of cost-benefit as well as principle) for
a session of scorched-earth countervailing duty
trade warfare.

China has been quietly
appreciating the yuan for several years.
Government action, combined with domestic
inflation, has led to a 40% appreciation in the
yuan since 2005 according to Treasury's
calculation, thereby significantly eroded the
export advantages the PRC enjoyed from its
undervalued currency. [5]

The Peterson
Institute, which hung its hat on the narrative
that China's adherence to an undervalued currency
was weaving thecapital account basket that would haul it straight to economic hell, went so far as to take issue with Treasury's rather mild conclusion that China, though not a manipulator, still had a "significant undervalued" currency:

"Treasury is making a mistake in not
giving China more credit for the appreciation
that it has undertaken and the large reduction
in its global external imbalance," Lardy said in
an e-mail. "They should not stick with the
'significantly undervalued' language."
[6]

Some observers looked at China's
shrinking foreign trade surplus and a sustained
drop in yuan deposits in Hong Kong and decided
that the yuan already reached genuine equilibrium
in the fourth quarter of 2011. [7]

There
appears to be an expert consensus that further
pounding on the yuan valuation is
counterproductive, and a distraction from more
effective measures like pushing the PRC on the
opening of its financial markets, respect for
intellectual property, and so forth. [8]

Distaste for pursuing the
currency-manipulation chimera is compounded by
financiers' desire to get down to the business of
trading the yuan, and by a growing squeamishness
about pushing a trade war with China while the
global economy is gasping for breath.

In
Europe, the obsession of US political circles with
the yuan is quietly poo-pooed as London positions
itself for the possibility that it will soon be
trading large amounts of yuan in virtually
free-market conditions, hopefully without the
ruinous distraction of compulsory appreciation
imposed under American pressure. [9]

As
China concludes currency swap agreements with
multiple partners in an effort to internationalize
the yuan and reduce its reliance on the dollar
(and remove its banking relationships from the
baleful influence of US Treasury sanctions),
trading bands have been widened and the yuan is
beginning to behave like a real currency.

In fact, as the Chinese economy slows and
the US becomes the safest haven for investors
spooked by the travails of the euro, the yuan has
shown a perfectly rational trend to depreciate.

Thereby, a significant historical
threshold has been crossed: holding the yuan is no
longer considered a sure, one-way bet on
appreciation, and international hot money - parked
in China in the guise of real estate and other
investments while waiting for an easy forex payday
- has started to flow out of China instead. [10]

While depreciation of the yuan provides
the volatility that currency speculators adore -
and is the prerequisite for an exciting and
profitable global market in the currency and its
derivatives - it is also an unwelcome symptom of a
weakening global economy.

Xinhua reported
the grim numbers for July 2012:

"The July data were poor indeed,"
said Zheng Yuesheng, head of the GAC [General
Administration of Customs] statistical
department. "It will be an arduous task to
fulfill our foreign trade target, as external
demand is weak."

Wang Tao, chief China
economist of UBS Securities, saw increasing
downside risks in exports in the third quarter
due to sagging US and European markets.

China's exports to the EU, its largest
trading partner, slumped 16.2% year on year in
July, GAC figures showed.

Exports to the
United States, the country's second-largest
trading partner, edged up 0.6% year on year,
compared with 10.6% growth in June.
[11]

Now we enter into ironic
territory.

Continuing to allow the yuan to
appreciate to benefit foreign exporters distressed
by weak economies and China's trade surpluses, and
to strengthen the hand of outgoing Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao and the reformers, who are trying to
restructure the Chinese economy away from export
processing, real estate speculation, state
enterprises, and single-minded investment in
infrastructure, would require active intervention
and purchase of yuan by the People's Bank of China
- the kind of currency manipulation free-market
apostles abhor.

Instead, the idealistic
desire to see the yuan strengthen is in danger of
being overwhelmed by a self-interested desire by
many corporations, both inside and outside China,
for the PRC to weaken the yuan (through
quantitative easing, a type of currency
manipulation not unfamiliar to the US Treasury
Department) to get exports moving, gun the
stimulus engine, and keep the global economy going
- inflation and trade surpluses - and distaste for
"currency manipulation" - be damned.

In
summary, today China might be too big - and the
international economy too weak - for the ordinary
political rules of China-bashing to apply. And as
much as we adore our new not-quite-free-market
friends (and useful antagonists of China) in
India, Vietnam, and Myanmar, they aren't quite
ready to pick up the slack.

The Wall
Street Journal's editorial page, no friend of
state socialism, and in fact the Great Thunderer
of the Republican Party, ran an editorial - not an
op-ed - on August 16 titled "China Trade
Benefits". It took aim at congressmen pushing
anti-currency manipulation legislation, asserted
that their districts have benefited enormously
from exports to China, and refused to endorse the
existence of Chinese currency manipulation, merely
characterizing it as "alleged". [12]

The
Journal's editorial echoes a recent chorus of
disapproving op-eds in the business press from
Bloomberg to Forbes to Reuters. [13]

One
can draw the conclusion that designation of China
as a currency manipulator, a key plank of Romney's
platform is 1) factually dubious, 2) practically
and legally unfeasible, 3) ineffective, 4)
dangerous to the world economy, 5) takes money out
of the pockets of masters of the universe looking
to profit from the trade in yuan, and 6) is odious
to his core supporters, who rely on sustained
global economic growth for their continued
financial success.

In an oblique nod to
the concerns of his backers, Romney has floated
plans for a titanic Pacific economic engine to
take away the downside of a trade war with China,
at least in theory: a confrontational free-trade
zone that will boost trade internally while
sticking it to countries - like the PRC - that
fail to display sufficient allegiance to
open-market and free-trade principals.

This initiative appears to be nothing more
than a clone of President Obama's Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Romney's alternative has, to his
mind, one unanswerable advantage: it is called
"The Reagan Economic Zone" (REZ), bringing the
irresistible posthumous charisma of the Republican
Party's Great Communicator to bear on our overawed
Asian trading partners.

Reuters veered
dangerously close to editorializing in its
description of this ad hoc piece of political
vaporware, describing the REZ as "a new
super-sized free-trade agreement without precise
geographic boundaries to act as a counterweight to
[China]." [14]

Romney's China economic
policy seems to be little more than empty
election-season sloganeering. If he is elected
president, Romney will probably be most sedulous
in his stewardship of the world economy and his
own millions, and an antagonistic currency and
trade policy will not be at the top of China's
list of US-related worries.

That may
create some awkward moments with the Republican
Party's fire-eating base, but Romney is no
stranger to awkward moments.

Friday, August 24, 2012

The Pussy Riot sentences (and the
original prosecution) were misguided and excessive.

Putin undoubtedly found the band’s
90-second exhibition of punk calisthenics in the Church of the Savior offensive
and a personal insult.The Russian
Orthodox Church is a major political prop for Putin and he probably thought he
could reassure the church of his steadfastness as defender of the faith as well
as score political points with conservative Russians with a heavy-handed
slapdown.

But now the band has become an
international cause celebre and lodestar for domestic and international
opponents of Putin.

In an interesting blurring of the
line between journalistic objectivity and human-rights agitprop, the armchair
revolutionaries at the Guardian chose to create a
video for the band’s latest release showing the women looking at turns
gorgeous, defiant, and adorable.

That, combined with criticism of the
sentence from the Obama administration and other human rights worthies, may be
enough to convince Putin to keep the women in the can to serve their full term.

After all, if the sentences were
commuted in response to the Russian Orthodox Church’s expressions of “forgiveness”
and Putin’s own political calculations, it will be seen as a victory for the
band—and inspiration for copycats and excuse for foreign meddling-- and not a
welcome display of mercy by the administration.

However, it remains to be seen if
shifting the terms of debate to the free-speech rights of punk rock
provocateurs and away from Putin’s close and unhealthy ties to the Russian
Orthodox Church (which the Pussy Riot escapade was designed to highlight) will
accelerate the erosion of his power.

Cultivating
and exploiting the power and prestige of the Russian Orthodox Church has become
a priority for Vladimir Putin.

When, in the spring of 2012, Putin
reassumed the presidency in an election that was very much not to the liking of
the United States, he went to
receive the blessing of Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, a
demonstration of the extremely close ties between church and Putin that have
rankled critics and inspired Pussy Riot’s act of outrance.

In addition to providing a taste of
the Byzantine-vintage smells and bells pageantry that is the church’s specialty,
the candid footage is also an interesting psychological document as it shows
Putin losing the battle to appear humble and overawed for more than a few
seconds.

The ceremony took place in the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Annunciation, one of Moscow's smaller religious outfits, but the home of the private chapel of the Tsars since the days of Ivan the Terrible, a detail whose significance was presumably not lost on either Putin or Kirill.

The video is worth watching fullscreen on Youtube for its telling detail, including an awkward moment when Kirill gifts Putin with an ancient icon of the Mother of Tenderness, a depiction of the Virgin Mary of Vladimir regarded as the protector of Russia (see endnote).

Putin briskly receives the icon, presents it to his wife for appropriate obeisance, and hands it off to a henchman. Kirill, apparently not quite able to grasp the simple idea that what's Putin's is Putin's--period--flutters around ineffectually, trying to maintain an air of continued church involvement in the ritual transfer as the treasure literally passes from his hands.

Prior to the Pussy Riot contretemps,
the big event for the church/party machinery was taking another precious Marian relic, the Girdle of the Virgin Mary, on a roadshow through Russia in the last
months of 2011.

The Belt
of the Virgin Mary, otherwise referred to as the Precious Sash, or Cincture, of
Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos – the holy treasure of the Vatopedi Monastery on
Mount Athos in Greece, is travelling abroad for the first time. The Belt is
travelling in style. It flies in a private jet, chartered by the tour’s
organizer – the influential St. Andrew Foundation, and is accompanied by six
Vatopedi monks. In St. Petersburg, it was welcomed by none other than Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin. In Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city,
Governor Alexander Misharin and the region’s bishop, Metropolitan Kirill, met
the relic with the guard of honor before a procession of some 15,000 people
took it to the cathedral.

The
numbers are stunning indeed. In St. Petersburg, estimated one million people
came to venerate the Belt in three days and nights, according to the local
media. People stood in line for twelve to fourteen hours to be able to kiss the
silver box containing the piece of camel wool fabric believed to have been
woven and worn by the Virgin Mary, and take a small band blessed on the relic.
In Yekaterinburg it was 300,000, in Krasnoyarsk – 100,000. The relic has
already been to the country’s Far East – in Vladivostok, and the Far North – in
Norilsk, beyond the Arctic Circle. Volgograd and Stavropol in the South are in
the days to come. And it is hard to imagine what kind of crowds will gather in
Moscow when, by the end of November, the relic arrives in the capital before
leaving Russia for good.

Clerics said they hoped the relic would
help more Russian women become mothers as the
influential Russian Orthodox Church is actively promoting motherhood to help
the government curtail a population decline.

Church officials in several cities plan
to take the relic to pregnancy centres that counsel women contemplating an
abortion, the Russian Orthodox Church said.

“This event is of huge significance
especially when it comes to strengthening people’s faith,” Father Kirill, a
spokesman for the Saint Petersburg diocese, told AFP.

“And the fact that this is such a
singular relic helping women is especially important for our city and our
country, where the demographic situation leaves much to be desired.”

Russian leaders have called the shrinking
population a matter of national security.

The country’s latest census released
earlier this year showed that the country’s population had shrunk by 2.2
million people since 2002 and now stands at 142.9 million.

There are also photos of Putin and
Medvedev solemnly observing the reliquary. Putin chose to appear in his
Action Man uniform (no tie, unbuttoned collar), inviting the question of
whether his expression is one of stunned reverence or sullen challenge to a
potential rival.

All joking aside, Vladimir
Putin has jettisoned the official atheism of the KGB and has established
the Russian state as a vigorous promoter of the Russian Orthodox Church--and
vice versa, as Michael Binyon wrote for The Humanist in 2008:

Putin
… is fervently and ostentatiously observant in his religious beliefs. As a
result, the Russian Orthodox Church, now richer and more powerful than at any
time for almost a century, has been at the centre of all state ceremonies, is a
strong supporter of Putin’s policies and has resumed its traditional role as
the spiritual arm of the Russian state. Restored churches can be seen everywhere.
There are now some 28,000 parish churches in Russia, 732 monasteries and
convents and thousands of priests training in seminaries. Putin delivers
speeches at major religious festivals; in return the Patriarch acts as his
agent in extending his control over all sectors of society. Church and
Communist Party have become almost interchangeable.

After Christmas service in January
of this year, Putin appeared before reporters to talk at length about the circumstances of his secret baptism as an
infant.He related that his mother
brought him to the church without the knowledge of his father, “a member of the
Communist Party and a loyal and uncompromising man”.

Promoting the Russian Orthodox
Church is not merely Putin’s personal initiative.

As reported
by Ministry Values in 2010, ex-President Medvedev was equally forthright
about playing the religious card:

An icon of Jesus hidden in a Kremlin gate used
by Soviet leaders but bricked over in the 1930s during communist
times was restored on Saturday to public view.

Russian President Medvedev, on the day that marks the Virgin
Mary being taken into heaven, said the "Saviour Smolensky" icon,
which depicts Jesus holding open the New Testament, with Russian saints below
him, will provide moral support to Russia.

"Now that we've got the icon back, our country secures an
additional defense."

The Russian Orthodox Church is now firmly
embedded in a conservative political and economic matrix courtesy of Putin’s
cronies and protectors.

The “influential St. Andrew
Foundation” cited in the Novosti report—the outfit that sent the private jet to
pick up the belt—is a religious foundation run by Vladimir Yakunin, a
member of Putin’s inner circle and reputedly a veteran of the KGB’s First
Directorate. He is also president of the gigantic state-owned Russian
Railways.

Presumably, Yakunin is there to lock
up the support of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy for Putin and whatever
subsequent strongman craves well-financed, pervasive, and activist backing from
the conservative church.

In 2010, European CEO breathlessly pegged
him as “the man to watch” as a potential successor to Putin:

This
ex-KBG spook is discreet, bright and endowed with a potentially huge powerbase.
Vladimir Yakunin has a neighbouring lake-side dacha with prime minister (and
former president) Putin. He’s often mentioned in the same breath as other
successors to his all-powerful boss…

He’s
patently bright and has certainly proved himself able and willing to move with
the times. After the Soviet Union collapsed he moved into banking and business
before being appointed as deputy transport minister in 2000. Many ex-KGB
personnel were able to take advantage of new industry licences and Yakunin,
along with some physicist friends, were no exception. In time they established
Bank Russia, which later financed Putin’s re-election campaign in 2004.

Yet it would be a mistake to label this
discreetly influential man as just another power-hungry party apparatchik or
ex-KGB “siloviki”, the unflattering term given to describe the network of ex
and current state-security officers. He has a fascination with Russia’s
religious legacy and has helped launch a foundation that encourages
reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Yakunin’s “fascination with Russia’s
religious legacy”, and his evolution from amoral KGB apparatchik to creepy,
"values"-promoting bigot is reflected in remarks like this:

The head
of the Council of Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and
JSC Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, believes tolerance to homosexuality is
harmful.

"I think traditional family values
and childbearing should not be substituted with some notorious imitations
invented by the homosexual propaganda which could be only arbitrarily called
attributes of a democratic society," he said at the opening ceremony of
the 15th World Russian People's Council held on Wednesday in Moscow.

Yakunin told that he wanted to address
this issue in his speech delivered at the Berlin forum last year, but he was
warned that "this country will hardly understand you; and you may have
troubles here."

"Nothing of the kind. There was not
a single protest made and not a single person left the room because I mentioned
that the propaganda of homosexuality was the same pollutant for the social
environment as other pollutants were for the natural one," he said.

This ruble-fueled synergy between the
reactionary church and Putin’s authoritarian political movement does not go down
well with many of Russia’s younger, Westernized, and liberal-democratic leaning
citizens, or Putin’s enemies of every stripe.

The Russian Orthodox Church and its
impeccably-groomed and lushly caparisoned patriarch, Kirill, have come in for
major slagging in the anti-Putin media for hypocrisy and partisanship.

Kirill’s miraculous financial
well-being, exemplified by his ownership or beneficial use of a luxury flat in
St. Petersburg (which came to light through successful litigation about dust
from construction in a neighboring unit, which, according to the judgment, caused
damage of 20 million rubles to the fastidious Patriarch’s belongings and valuable
religious texts), has become a piñata for opponents.

Kirill confessed that a generous follower
had gifted him with a $30,000 Bregeuet watch, but insisted that he never wore
the ostentatious bling.Unfortunately an
incriminating photograph—on the patriarch’s own website!-- revealed him taking
a meeting in 2009 with Russian Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov while wearing the watch.

In a clumsy exercise in damage
control, church officials pulled the photograph, Photoshopped it to obscure the
infamous timepiece, and re-posted.

While removing the watch, they
neglected to obscure its reflection on the highly-polished table.

In a subtle stunt worlds away from
the crude agitprop of Pussy Riot, someone re-photoshopped the image—removing Kirill
and leaving nothing but the floating watch and its reflection.

Some might call the image a perfect
symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church’s lust for material wealth and power and
the evaporation of its integrity and spiritual essence--leaving a void for the
likes of Putin and Pussy Riot to fill.

Endnote: It is difficult to resist a wander through Russian Orthodox Church history.

One can safely assume that Putin did not receive the original Mother of Tenderness icon--a.k.a. Our Lady of Vladimir, a national treasure now residing in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow--but one of the many ancient, venerable, and artistically distinguished copies surviving in Russia.

I don't think it's too risky to lean on Wikipedia as a source for information on the icon:

The Theotokos of Vladimir (Greek: Θεοτόκος του Βλαντιμίρ), also known as Our Lady of Vladimir or Virgin of Vladimir (Russian: Владимирская Икона Божией Матери) and "The Vladimir Madonna" - is one of the most venerated Orthodox icons and a typical example of Eleusa Byzantine iconography. The Theotokos (Greek word for Virgin Mary, literally meaning "Birth-Giver of God") is regarded as the holy protectress of Russia. The icon is displayed in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Her feast day is June 3. Even more than most famous icons, the original
has been copied repeatedly for centuries. Many copies now have
considerable artistic and religious significance of their own. The icon
is a version of the Eleusa (tenderness) type, with the Christ child snuggling up to his mother's cheek.

About 1131 the Greek Patriarch Luke Chrysoberges of Constantinople sent the icon as a gift to Grand Duke Yury Dolgoruky of Kiev. The image was kept in the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery until Dolgoruky's son Andrey Bogolyubskiy brought it to his favourite city, Vladimir, in 1155.[1] ...

In 1395, during Tamerlane's
invasion, the image was taken from Vladimir to the new capital, Moscow.
...Vasili I of Moscow
spent a night crying over the icon, and Tamerlane's armies retreated
the same day. The Muscovites refused to return the icon to Vladimir and
placed it in the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Moscow Kremlin. The intercession of the Theotokos through the image was credited also with saving Moscow from Tatar hordes in 1451 and 1480.

... In December 1941, as the Germans approached Moscow, Joseph Stalin
allegedly ordered that the icon be placed in an airplane and flown
around the besieged capital. Several days later, the German army started
to retreat.[2]

I might add that there are rumors that another Marian icon, Our Lady of Kazan, was paraded around the fortifications of Leningrad during the epic siege.

Monday, August 20, 2012

The Pussy Riot sentences (and the original prosecution) were
misguided and excessive.

Putin undoubtedly found the band’s 90-second escapade of
punk calisthenics in the Church of the Savior offensive and a personal
insult.The Russian Orthodox Church is a
major political prop for Putin and he probably thought he could reassure the
church of his steadfastness as defender of the faith as well as score political
points with conservative Russians with a heavy-handed slapdown.

But now the band has become an international cause celebre
and lodestar for domestic and international opponents of Putin.

In an interesting blurring of the line between journalistic
objectivity and human-rights agitprop, the armchair revolutionaries at the Guardian
chose to create a videofor the band’s latest release showing
the women looking at turns gorgeous, defiant, and adorable.

That, combined with criticism of the sentence from the Obama
administration and other human rights worthies, may be enough to convince Putin
to keep the women in the can to serve their full term.

After all, if the sentences were commuted in response to the
Russian Orthodox Church’s expressions of “foregiveness” and Putin’s own
political calculations, it will be seen as a victory for the band—and inspiration
for copycats and excuse for foreign meddling-- and not a welcome display of mercy by the administration.

However, it remains to be seen if shifting the terms of
debate to the free-speech rights of punk rock provocateurs and away from Putin’s
close and unhealthy ties to the Russian Orthodox Church (which the Pussy Riot
outrage was designed to highlight) will accelerate the erosion of his power.

Here’s something I wrote last November on Putin’s religious strategy on the occasion of the visit of a treasured relic, the Girdle of St.
Mary, to Russia. The massive turnout to adore the relic implies that there is more political capital for Putin in championing the church than appeasing the followers of Pussy Riot:

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

One thing that’s pretty clear is that
religious movements are, for the most part, conservative and have served
as bulwarks of authoritarianism (and a shield against challenges to the
wealth and power of the privileged) at least since the days of the
Social Democrats.

Authoritarian atheism, after a brief, 20th century heyday under Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, is perhaps headed for the dustbin of history.

Religion is too good for business, billionaires, and bosses, both in liberal democracies and post-Communist states.

Modern plutocracies have rediscovered the fact that there’s nothing like
appeals to religious identity to split the electorate and marginalize
those obstreperous liberal activists whose political views usually
combine irreligious sentiments with enthusiasm for democracy and a nasty
penchant for economic justice.

I think the Russians under Putin have broken the code. Via RIA Novosti:

A remarkable procession is currently taking place in Russia…

The
Belt of the Virgin Mary, otherwise referred to as the Precious Sash, or
Cincture, of Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos – the holy treasure of the
Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, is travelling abroad for
the first time. The Belt is travelling in style. It flies in a private
jet, chartered by the tour’s organizer – the influential St. Andrew
Foundation, and is accompanied by six Vatopedi monks. In St. Petersburg,
it was welcomed by none other than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In
Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, Governor Alexander Misharin
and the region’s bishop, Metropolitan Kirill, met the relic with the
guard of honor before a procession of some 15,000 people took it to the
cathedral.

The
numbers are stunning indeed. In St. Petersburg, estimated one million
people came to venerate the Belt in three days and nights, according to
the local media. People stood in line for twelve to fourteen hours to be
able to kiss the silver box containing the piece of camel wool fabric
believed to have been woven and worn by the Virgin Mary, and take a
small band blessed on the relic. In Yekaterinburg it was 300,000, in
Krasnoyarsk – 100,000. The relic has already been to the country’s Far
East – in Vladivostok, and the Far North – in Norilsk, beyond the Arctic
Circle. Volgograd and Stavropol in the South are in the days to come.
And it is hard to imagine what kind of crowds will gather in Moscow
when, by the end of November, the relic arrives in the capital before
leaving Russia for good.

According to the Sacred
Tradition and the history of our Church, the Most Holy Theotokos [Virgin
Mary] three days after she fell asleep she rose from the dead and
ascended in body to the heavens. During her ascension, she gave her Holy
Belt to the Apostle Thomas. Thomas, along with the rest of the holy
Apostles, opened up her grave and didn't find the body of the Theotokos.
In this way the Holy Belt is proof for our Church of her Resurrection
and bodily ascension to the heavens, and, in a word, at her metastasis.

Clerics said they hoped the relic would help more Russian women become mothers
as the influential Russian Orthodox Church is actively promoting
motherhood to help the government curtail a population decline.

Church officials in several
cities plan to take the relic to pregnancy centres that counsel women
contemplating an abortion, the Russian Orthodox Church said.

“This event is of huge
significance especially when it comes to strengthening people’s faith,”
Father Kirill, a spokesman for the Saint Petersburg diocese, told AFP.

“And the fact that this is such a
singular relic helping women is especially important for our city and
our country, where the demographic situation leaves much to be desired.”

Russian leaders have called the shrinking population a matter of national security.

The country’s latest census
released earlier this year showed that the country’s population had
shrunk by 2.2 million people since 2002 and now stands at 142.9 million.

There are also photos of Putin and Medvedev
solemnly observing the reliquary. Putin chose to appear in his Action
Man uniform (no tie, unbuttoned collar), inviting the question of
whether his expression is one of stunned reverence or sullen challenge
to a potential rival.

All joking aside, Vladimir Putin has
jettisoned the official atheism of the KGB and has established the
Russian state as a vigorous promoter of the Russian Orthodox Church--and
vice versa, as Michael Binyon wrote for The Humanist in 2008:

Putin
… is fervently and ostentatiously observant in his religious beliefs.
As a result, the Russian Orthodox Church, now richer and more powerful
than at any time for almost a century, has been at the centre of all
state ceremonies, is a strong supporter of Putin’s policies and has
resumed its traditional role as the spiritual arm of the Russian state.
Restored churches can be seen everywhere. There are now some 28,000
parish churches in Russia, 732 monasteries and convents and thousands of
priests training in seminaries. Putin delivers speeches at major
religious festivals; in return the Patriarch acts as his agent in
extending his control over all sectors of society. Church and Communist
Party have become almost interchangeable.

As reported by Ministry Values in 2010, President Medvedev is equally forthright about playing the religious card:

An icon of Jesus hidden in a Kremlin gate used by Soviet leaders but bricked over in the 1930s during communist times was restored on Saturday to public view.

Russian
President Medvedev, on the day that marks the Virgin Mary being taken
into heaven, said the "Saviour Smolensky" icon, which depicts Jesus
holding open the New Testament, with Russian saints below him, will
provide moral support to Russia.

"Now that we've got the icon back, our country secures an additional defense."

The “influential St. Andrew Foundation”
cited in the Novosti report—the outfit that sent the private jet to pick
up the belt—is a religious foundation run by Vladimir Yakunin,
a member of Putin’s inner circle and reputedly a veteran of the KGB’s
First Directorate. He is also president of the gigantic state-owned
Russian Railways.

Presumably, Yakunin is there to lock up the
support of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy for Putin and whatever
subsequent strongman craves well-financed, pervasive, and activist
backing from the conservative church.

In 2010, European CEO breathlessly pegged him as “the man to watch” as a potential successor to Putin:

This
ex-KBG spook is discreet, bright and endowed with a potentially huge
powerbase. Vladimir Yakunin has a neighbouring lake-side dacha with
prime minister (and former president) Putin. He’s often mentioned in the
same breath as other successors to his all-powerful boss…

He’s patently bright and
has certainly proved himself able and willing to move with the times.
After the Soviet Union collapsed he moved into banking and business
before being appointed as deputy transport minister in 2000. Many ex-KGB
personnel were able to take advantage of new industry licences and
Yakunin, along with some physicist friends, were no exception. In time
they established Bank Russia, which later financed Putin’s re-election
campaign in 2004.

Yet it would be a mistake to
label this discreetly influential man as just another power-hungry party
apparatchik or ex-KGB “siloviki”, the unflattering term given to
describe the network of ex and current state-security officers. He has a
fascination with Russia’s religious legacy and has helped launch a
foundation that encourages reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox
Church.

Yakunin’s “fascination with Russia’s
religious legacy”, and his evolution from amoral KGB apparatchik to
creepy, "values"-promoting bigot is reflected in remarks like this:

The head of the Council of
Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and JSC Russian
Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, believes tolerance to homosexuality is
harmful.

"I think traditional family
values and childbearing should not be substituted with some notorious
imitations invented by the homosexual propaganda which could be only
arbitrarily called attributes of a democratic society," he said at the
opening ceremony of the 15th World Russian People's Council held on
Wednesday in Moscow.

Yakunin told that he wanted to
address this issue in his speech delivered at the Berlin forum last
year, but he was warned that "this country will hardly understand you;
and you may have troubles here."

"Nothing of the kind. There was
not a single protest made and not a single person left the room because I
mentioned that the propaganda of homosexuality was the same pollutant
for the social environment as other pollutants were for the natural
one," he said.

Getting back to the Cincture of the Virgin
Mary, another version of the relic is held by the Jacobite Syrian Church
in Homs—yes, Homs, ground zero of the anti-Assad rebellion-- under
considerably less glamorous conditions.

The reliquary, and a history of Syria’s
girdle and religious art showing its bestowal on St. Thomas, can be
viewed on a very interesting Flickr feed by Rhoneil Victor de Leon.

On its website,
the Cathedral of St. Mary in Homs claims its belt is the one that Mary
dropped to St. Thomas from heaven, was brought to Syria in 476 and
hidden in the church, and was rediscovered in 1953.

Remarkably, a piece of the Homs belt resides in Jacksonville, Florida at the Mother of God Zunoro Syrian Orthodox Church.
The Patriarch of Damascus arranged to bestow a section of the belt on
the new church. The relic was first adored at a sister church in
Paramus, NJ, before taking up permanent residence in Florida in 1998.

Any competing
claim for the Homs belt is not addressed on the Mt. Athos website, which
plausibly traces the provenance of its belt back to the Byzantine
Empire in the 12th century and its donation to Mt. Athos by Emperor John the 6th Katakouzinos (1347-1355).